Addiction is thus an effort to reconcile yourself with an abusive society that makes unlimited demands of its subjects. But it gives the game away that these addictions are seen as pathological only when they make you unproductive—i.e., drinking becomes a “drinking problem” when it interferes with your work or the reproductive labor of your personal relationships. Addiction is a produced, fully anticipated response to the vicissitudes of consumer capitalism and a diagnosable pathology of legal consequence.

One of my goals in life is to become truly rabbinical, to be able to answer closed questions with open questions, to have the internal authority to be a good gatekeeper when intruders approach, and to at least remember to ask, “Why are you asking that?”